Barring any unforeseen complications, the city’s water plant personnel were poised to put Gladewater’s principle pumps back in position Tuesday.
The repair of the essential water system equipment was scheduled after the Mirror’s publication deadline, but City Manager Charlie Smith was confident the maintenance would go ahead as soon and efficiently as possible under Plant Director Wendy Emmel’s supervision.
“We’re going to set the two water pumps Tuesday (April 9) and pull the third that’s been running nonstop,” he said ahead of time, eager to get the plant’s equipment back in place and operating normally after two of the city’s three water pumps went kaput back-to-back in early March.
The trio’s meant to provide redundancy in case one goes down. With two dropping in succession, the collective blood pressure went up at City Hall – one more failure would launch a slew of consequences down-line.
Smith praised Emmel as well as Operator Nate Palmer for the extra hours, and no small amount of tension, they’ve endured for the past several weeks, waiting for the pumps’ off-site repair and ETA-unknown replacement. The water plant employees kept a round-the-clock watch on their Little Pump That Could using remote monitoring software.
With the pump pair’s return, a sigh of relief is in order along with some TLC for the pump that’s been pulling triple-duty.
In due course, the water plant will be back to double-redundancy.
Meanwhile, “We’ve got our state inspection the 18th out there, too,” Smith added. “I’m confident it’ll be one of the best that we’ve had in several years.”
“I’ve got a list that’s about two pages long that Wendy put together,” showing the plant’s inspection-readiness for operations, chemical feeds, maintenance processes and more: “They’re looking at the functioning of the plant.”
Notably, water quality’s a monthly-check, and the latest results are due soon. At the other end of Gladewater’s flow, last week the city received a clean bill of health on its regular bio-monitoring check at the Wastewater Plant.
– By James Draper